Chapter C: F. L (8)

“There will be ducks, _pues_, over in the cove. _Vamos!_”

Ducks there were, by the hundred; and mudhens, and dippers, and flamingoes, and almost every other aquatic fowl, among the rushes in the eastern cove. With the shotgun we could have mowed down a bushel of them—but the shotgun was lying with my sleeping bag and rawhide muleback trunks over in a hut on the mainland. Well, with the six-shooter we could count on one bird, anyhow; and I drew it and began to rub off last night’s rust.

“But wait me,” said the little balsero. “It is better not to frighten them, for we may need more than one. With this there is no noise.”

As he spoke he unwound the braided sling which bound his long black hair. It was the immemorial weapon of his people—even so I had taken it from the skulls of mummies of his ancestors far antedating the Conquest. Pablo gathered some smooth pebbles from the beach and began creeping toward the cove, sheltering himself whenever a bunch of _totora_ offered. The water-fowl began to edge out, and a few nervous ducks rose. But the boy knew his business and kept on at the same gait. Suddenly straightening up, he whirled his right arm thrice around, and even from where I was I could hear a twang, and then the _sh-oo-oo_ of the hurtling pebble.

There was a commotion among the birds, and a great white swan stretched and half rose from the water and dropped back in a shower of spray. Pablo was already in the water, keeping out of sight all but his head, and in a couple of rods that also disappeared. The swan suddenly redoubled its struggles, beating one wing till the water foamed, but without progress. Then it began to drift shoreward, still fighting; and in a moment I saw a dark object rise just in front of it. The swan saw, too, and aimed a stunning blow with its wing. But the head had already vanished and the screaming bird kept moving shoreward despite his struggles. Then I waited so long that it seemed impossible that one should so endure under water, when the swan’s violent pecking at his breast relieved me. Pablo, to keep out of the way of that heavy wing and beak, was holding the great bird firmly down upon the crown of his head, and when it was needful to take a breath he could thus get his nose out of water without seriously exposing himself. It was when he should come where the water was but a couple of feet deep that trouble would begin, and already I judged that he was lying upon his back and kicking along the mud. Time after time a dark fist came up to grapple that snake-like neck, but the bird was too smart and the captor got only savage bites for his pains. I ran out to help, and the swan met me with a peck that took a morsel off my hand; but a back sweep of the bowie sent the head flying twenty feet, and after a little more flopping the great fowl fell limp. The missile from the sling had shattered his left wing.

Well, when Pablo had warmed himself in the scorching sun, and we had gathered another bunch of dry weeds and more or less plucked the bird and half toasted thin strips of it in the embers, and devoured each a wolf’s share, we felt better. Perhaps we swallowed quite as much ashes as meat, and salt would have helped it—but it was a wonderful banquet, anyhow. We washed it down with drafts from the ill-tasting lake, and I dried a brown-paper cigarette on a sunny rock until it was smokable, and for a while we wallowed in the hot sun and watched the drift of shadows on Illampu, which had snared all the clouds from the sky.

“_Pues_, the pictures. And then, to get back to shore,” I said at last, getting up reluctantly. Pablo was greatly interested in that wonderful glass in its shining tube, and marveled at the unkinking of the tripod and how the whole artful box opened and swelled at a touch. We carried it to the top of the hill, and I made my pictures and showed him the inverted gem of color on the ground glass and explained it all to him in the formula I learned long ago for Indian friends, to whom one has to adapt one’s own point of view. Then he took me to the ruin—some fallen houses and a strong wall of great rocks wonderfully squared and carved, and we made a picture there, with tattered Pablo standing beside the noble handiwork of his fathers. Unhappily, the plate fell a victim to the abominable dampness of Lima.

“If we had but a spade,” sighed Pablo, who went scuffing his toes in the rubbish of the forgotten rooms. “What says the _viracocha_? Shall we come back one day and dig here? For surely there will be treasure. Over yonder, toward that island, is where they say the Incas sunk the chain of Huascar, that the Spaniards might not find it. And many have looked for it, and some even talk to drain the lake.”

“I can see them draining Titi-caca! But come, what was this chain of Huascar?” I asked, as seriously as if this were all news to me.

“_Mppss!_ It was of gold, then—pure gold. For when Huascar Inca was born his father, Huayna Capac, ordered made this chain of gold, three hundred paces long and the fatness of my thumb, that the people might dance holding it. Ay, if one might find it! Sometimes, looking over the balsa, I have thought to see _that_ shining on the bottom, but then it was only a _boga_ turning to the sun.”

“Ea, and what wouldst thou, _hijito_, finding this chain of Huascar?”

“Yo? _Mpps, Vueséncia_, I would—_mppss_—I would buy the balsa of Jeraldo, which is very good; and three pigs and a cow for my mother, and a net; and—and—and—boots like those of your Excellency——”

“Good! And I hope thou’lt find it. I mind me that an Inca, Don Garcilaso de la Vega, who wrote a book two hundred and ninety years ago—_sabes_ book? Well, it is much paper tied together—much spoiled paper, with words on it. And this Inca said that the chain of Huascar was thrown into the little lake in the valley of Orcos, which the Spaniards did indeed try to drain. But Garcilaso said many things—particularly in December when the days are long—and I fancy thou’rt as like to find the chain in this lake as in any other.”

“But the paper, se’or, how can it tell these things?”

“_Pues_, because we make paper that talks—not out loud, but telling you things without a sound. And sometimes it knows how to lie, just like people.”

“Perhaps it was not Don Garcilaso’s fault, then—it can be that he got that kind of paper. For I know the chain is in this lake here, of Titi-caca, since my grandfather told me, and he knew from very long ago. He was taught in all the stories of our fathers, and he gave me this _auqui_ of old for a charm. Perhaps for that we were not swallowed by the lake.”

So saying, Pablo drew from his left-hand pouch a precious little fetich of silver, ages old, for there is no mistaking the prehistoric handiwork of Peru. It was in rude human form, and not cast, but hollow, beaten out and cupped and soldered so cleverly that one could scarce find the joint.

“_Hola!_ He was an _abuelo_ worth having. Come, I’ll give thee ten _soles_ for it, for I shall need an _auqui_ myself if I am to stay in these lands of ill luck.”

But Pablo shook his head, though I am positive he never had seen so much money in one pile before as the ten silver dollars in my hand.

“_Ha-ni-wa!_” he said. “For it is ill to sell these things, which are sacred.” He breathed on the image and tucked it carefully back in his _chuspa_.

The balsa, still nodding at the rushen cable, was soon repaired by Pablo’s apt hands with a few withes of _totora_. We stepped the mast again, as well as might be, in its torn socket, hoisted the rush sail, and drew slowly out in a light breeze. It was a very different passage from that of yesterday, and we sprawled lazily along the balsa, looking back now to the vast white peaks, and now to the weedy shore ahead. We crept through the outer fringe of _totora_, passing far to the left of a little stone hut that seemed built upon the very water a mile from shore. A few sad cattle lay about it, only their heads out of water; and nearer us, on a submerged bar, a gristly pig seemed undecided whether he had better root or swim. It was Pablo’s home, he told me—a fair type of the pitiful swamp ranches of the lake dwellers. In the shoals they build their squalid huts and raise the unkempt cattle which know no other pasturage—as their owners no other world.

When we came to the head of the bay and had waded ashore with the camera, we stood a long time in the mud looking back at the blue lake and the dark island. I was sore and hungry, and with much to do; but, somehow, it was hard to turn away. Pablo stood screwing his bare toes into the ooze, in as little haste to be off.

“And will your Excellency come again?” he said at last, catching my eye and then turning away.

“Who knows, _hijito_? To-morrow I take mule for the Desaguadero. Perhaps some day. But much eye that thou have a new balsa ready against then, for this is too old. And here is wherewith to buy Jeraldo’s, without waiting to find the chain of Huascar. _Adios_, then, and—_un abrazo!_”

He reached up to my shoulders and laid his head against me with a little tug, and suddenly broke away and started for the balsa. Midway he stopped and turned and came splashing back.

“Hear, _viracocha_,” he said, with a little uncertainty in his voice. “I could not sell the _auqui_, for it is not honest to take money for sacred things. But one who goes so far as your Excellency, and in many dangers, ought indeed to have one to keep harm from him. And for that you—that—that we were brothered in danger and you did not despise me, now I give you.” And flinging the precious figure at my feet, before I could gather my wits he was spattering out to the balsa. Nor would he return. Ten minutes later, when I looked back from the hut where my things were stored, the drab patch of his sail had quite faded in the _totoral_.

FOOTNOTES

[1] Ah-_say_-kee-ah. Irrigating ditch.

[2] _May_-sah. Table land.

[3] _Lay_-lo.

[4] _Meel_-pah. Field.

[5] _L’yah_-no. Plain.

[6] The quaint little Spanish-American donkey. Pronounced _Boo_-ro.

[7] Ta-_hee_-ke.

[8] Ho-_vay_-ro. Blaze-face.

[9] Tor-_teel_-yaz. Unleavened cakes of corn meal.

[10] Prairie dogs.

[11] For that is what _cholo_ means.

[12] Papa.

[13] Pronounced ll-_yah_-mah.

[14] The Peruvian silver dollar. Pronounced _soul_.

[15] “All right. Come.”

[16] The Aymará and Quichua Indian word for father.

[17] Ah-re-_kee_-pa.

[18] Seel-_yar_. A very light volcanic stone quarried on the side of the volcano. All Arequipa is built of it.

[19] Por-_tal_. The Spanish veranda.

[20] _Pah_-tee-o; courtyard.

[21] Indian half-breeds.

[22] Ho-_say_-fa.

[23] Pronounced Abby-_kew_.

[24] Tra-_pee_-che.

[25] Administrah-_dore_; overseer.

[26] Pronounced, An-_drayce_; and Arriero (arry-_ay_-ro), man in charge of a pack train.

[27] Ll-_yah_-ma. Double l in Spanish always has the sound that it has in our word “million.”

[28] Vee-_coon_-ya. The Spanish letter ñ has always the sound of ny in “lanyard.”

[29] Chacra—a farm.

[30] The Bolivian dollar.

[31] _Choon_-cho: literally, a “cannibal”—the word used specifically of the man-eating tribes of the upper Amazon, and in general as a term of reproach.

[32] _Flo_-ho.

[33] Antelopes.

[34] These artificial storms are a favorite illusion of the Indian wizards of the Southwest.

[35] Aspen.

[36] This “drawing” of objects from the patient is another stock trick of Pueblo “medicine-making.”

[37] Peen-_yone_.

[38] The proper pronunciation is Cal-_yah_-o.

[39] Ro-_deel_.

[40] This is properly pronounced not Bóllivar, but Bo-_lee_-var.

[41] Quicksilver.

[42] It is estimated that five hundred million dollars’ worth of silver and mercury have gone down it.